The Martian

For F*** Magazine

THE MARTIAN

Director : Ridley Scott
Cast : Matt Damon, Jeff Daniels, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Donald Glover, Benedict Wong
Genre : Sci-Fi/Adventure
Run Time : 142 mins
Opens : 1 October 2015
Rating : PG13 (Some Coarse Language and Disturbing Scenes)

Someone alert David Bowie – there is life on Mars after all. It comes in the form of astronaut Mark Watney (Damon), who is stranded on the planet after being presumed dead when a sandstorm strikes his crew. The rest of the Ares III astronauts, Lewis (Chastain), Martinez (Peña), Johanssen (Mara), Beck (Stan) and Vogel (Hennie) are bound for home, unaware that Watney is still alive. Watney is left to fend for himself, drawing on every ounce of resourcefulness as he makes the most out of extremely limited supplies, eking out an existence on Mars. Back on earth, NASA director Teddy Sanders (Daniels), Mars missions director Vincent Kapoor (Ejiofor), public relations manager Annie Montrose (Wiig), Jet Propulsion Lab director Bruce Ng (Wong) and others labour over devising a rescue plan once they discover Watney did not die as they had believed. In the face of sheer adversity, the “Martian” must survive and work towards finally coming home. 

The Martian is based on Andy Weir’s 2011 novel of the same name, which was lauded for being thoroughly researched. There exists a scale, albeit a subjective one, of science fiction “hardness”, with something like Guardians of the Galaxy on the “soft” side and 2001: A Space Odyssey on the “hard” side. The Martian is a rare big-budget Hollywood hard sci-fi film and it emerges triumphant. Director Ridley Scott hasn’t had a spotless track record, coming off last year’s below-average Biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings. His previous sci-fi film, 2012’s Prometheus, proved hugely divisive. With most of the key crew from Prometheus including director of photography Dariusz Wolski, editor Pietro Scalia, production designer Arthur Max and costume designer Janty Yates returning, Scott has managed to more than redeem himself. 

The Martian boasts a sweeping, epic majesty juxtaposed with the intimate tale of one man’s survival. Jordan’s Wadi Rum seems to have made a steady career doubling for the fourth planet from the sun in films like Mission to Mars, Red Planet, The Last Days on Mars and this one. While everything does look a little too slick and Hollywood-ised, there’s still a sense of authenticity, the harsh environs and the sheer remoteness of the Martian landscape driving home how slim Watney’s chances of making it out alive are. Real-life NASA staffers must be drooling at seeing manned Mars missions depicted so gloriously on the big screen, given how bureaucracy, a lack of funds and myriad other obstacles stand in the way of this actually being realized. The 3D effects are superb, most noticeably when we get to see astronauts floating through the long hallways of their spacecraft and in the exterior shots of the detailed and realistic Hermes ship drifting through space. 

Screenwriter Drew Goddard adapted Weir’s novel for the screen, and on paper, The Martian certainly sounds like it could be boring, with too many finicky technical details potentially holding the viewer at arm’s length. A good portion of the story unfolds in voice-overs that are packed with scientific exposition, but there is just as much showing as there is telling and the script is light enough on its feet, not getting weighed down by the “boring stuff”. This is a film that celebrates and champions science, all of its characters being the best and brightest. It’s also an extremely human survival story that almost defiantly refuses to spiral into mawkish sentimentality, while still hitting many emotional beats. Perhaps most surprisingly, The Martian is extremely funny. There are stakes and dire straits, but the tone is pleasantly upbeat and optimistic throughout. Sean Bean even gets to make a Lord of the Rings reference, sending many audience members in this reviewer’s screening howling with laughter. 

The Martian has been described as Apollo 13 meets Cast Away, and both films happen to star Tom Hanks. Here, Damon exudes an irresistible likeability that gives even Hanks a run for his money. Watney’s indomitable spirit and how he keeps his sense of humour intact throughout his ordeal keep us keen in seeing him alive. We cheer each instance in which his MacGyvering succeeds and wince whenever he’s hit by another setback. “Mars will come to fear my botany powers,” Watney jokingly proclaims as he sets about growing potatoes. Naturally, there are moments of introspection in which Watney considers the magnitude of his plight, and Damon is able to play those moments earnestly and compellingly. 

While the film is squarely Damon’s to carry, Scott has assembled a robust supporting cast to back him up. Cheesy as it sounds, there is something inspiring about seeing so many people put their heads together in working towards a common goal. Chastain proudly carries on the tradition of capable female characters in Ridley Scott movies, her Commander Melissa Lewis steely yet calm, a natural leader with an amusing penchant for 70s disco music. As NASA director Teddy Sanders, Daniels is the hard-nosed, pragmatic bureaucrat, but in his hands, the character does not become the stereotypical authority figure who’s standing in everyone’s way. Ejiofor does his share of hand-wringing, but it makes sense given the immense pressure on his character. Wiig is fine in a role that is not overtly comedic, though her presence at Mission Control might be distracting to those familiar with her prolific comedic exploits. 

There are places where the film falls back on formulaic genre trappings: the pilot Martinez tells engineer Johanssen to explain something “in English”; there are many scenes where characters take objects like pens and salt shakers and use them as stand-ins for spacecraft and planets in demonstrating manoeuvres and Donald Glover shows up as a hyperactive genius prone to Eureka moments. That said, it is remarkable just how refreshing The Martian is. In this day and age, it seems everything has been done before, especially in big sci-fi blockbusters. That The Martian manages to be so unique and engaging is certainly commendable. In telling the story of the efforts to bring Mark Watney home, Scott has hit a home run. 

Summary: A thrilling, surprisingly funny survival film with a grounding in actual science, The Martian features one of Matt Damon’s most charming performances to date and is a joyous ode to the merits of ingenuity and perseverance. 

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Exodus: Gods and Kings

For F*** Magazine

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS

Director : Ridley Scott

Cast : Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, John Tuturro, Aaron Paul, Ben Mendelsohn, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, María Valverde

Genre : Adventure/Action

Run Time : 150 mins

Rating : PG13 (Some Violence)

It could be said that Old Hollywood’s Biblical epics were the big-budget superhero blockbusters of their day, with their casts of thousands and lavish sets. Cecil B. Demille’s The Ten Commandments is the codifier of that genre and now director Ridley Scott offers up his retelling of the story of Moses.

            It is 1300 B.C. and Moses (Bale) is a general in the Egyptian army who has been raised alongside Prince Ramesses (Edgerton) by the Pharaoh Seti I (Tuturro). While on a routine survey at a work site, Moses is struck by how badly the Hebrew slaves are being treated. Nun (Kingsley) tells Moses the truth of his origins, that he was born a slave and raised by Pharaoh’s daughter. Moses is eventually exiled by Ramesses. He wanders the desert, becoming a shepherd and falling in love with the Midianite Zipporah (Valverde). After a dramatic spiritual encounter, Moses takes up the task of returning to Egypt to fight for the freedom of the Hebrew slaves. In the face of Ramesses’ stubbornness, God strikes Egypt with ten frightening plagues. Only after the most horrific of these calamities does Ramesses relent, but for Moses and the children of Israel, their journey has only just begun.

            The story of Moses is a familiar one, the best-known films inspired by it being the afore-mentioned The Ten Commandments and the 1998 animated film The Prince of Egypt. Director Ridley Scott, who as the promotional materials are quick to remind us helmed Gladiator, delivers a not-quite epic. While the departures from the Biblical source material are not as outrageous as in Noah, it seems that Scott’s approach was to make more of a gritty swords-and-sandals flick than a grand, majestic Old Hollywood-style extravaganza. Perhaps this is meant to appeal to more cynical moviegoers but this reviewer was particularly disappointed that after being promised large-scale 3D spectacle, in this version, the Red Sea does not so much part as recede – off-screen. In trying to differentiate itself from earlier takes on the Exodus story, Exodus: Gods and Kings ditches one of the most iconic images in favour of a more “plausible” underwater earthquake.

            Sure, this is a $140 million movie and there still is spectacle to be had. The film was mostly shot in the historic Spanish city of Almería and the Egpytian palace sets do look suitably imposing and sprawling. The highlight of the film is the sequence of the ten plagues, in which we get swarms of buzzing locusts in 3D. The first plague in Exodus: Gods and Kings, the rivers of blood, is brought about by a violent clash of a bask of monstrous crocodiles. There are also lots of flyovers of ancient Egypt and while the CGI does mostly look good and certainly took large amounts of effort to complete, it’s always clear that what we’re looking at is computer-generated, resulting in the nagging sense of a lack of authenticity.

            Much has been made of the “whitewashed” cast – suffice it to say that you wouldn’t find anyone who looked a lot like Christian Bale or Joel Edgerton in Ancient Egypt. Scott has defended this by saying the big-budget film would not get made without A-list stars in the leading roles. Fair enough, but for this reviewer at least, this further affects the authenticity of the film and pulls one out of it somewhat – not to the extent of the film adaptations of Prince of Persia and The Last Airbender, but still in that unfortunate vein.

            Christian Bale is now the second former Batman to play Moses, after Batman Forever’s Val Kilmer voiced the titular Prince of Egypt. More emphasis is placed on Moses as a warrior, the film opening with a battle sequence in which the Egyptian army storms a Hittite encampment. Through most of the film, Moses comes off as weary and confused, with the heavy implication that his encounters with God might merely be delusional episodes. However, he’s still plenty heroic and steadfast and there’s enough of an old-school leader in this interpretation despite the modern “flawed hero” approach. Joel Edgerton seems visibly unsure of how over the top to go with his portrayal of Ramesses, conflicted as to how much scenery he is allowed to chew without going all-out ridiculous. In the end, this pales in comparison to the clash of titans between Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner. The “brothers-turned-enemies” relationship was also drawn more compellingly in The Prince of Egypt.

            The supporting cast barely registers, with Sigourney Weaver getting a total of around five minutes of screen time. Ben Mendelsohn’s campy turn as Hegep is entertaining but seems slightly out of place, even given the flamboyance associated with Ancient Egyptian royalty. As with most of Ridley Scott’s films, there will probably be an extended director’s cut released and perhaps we will get more characterisation in that version. At 154 minutes, this theatrical cut is still something of a drag. The “event film” of the holiday season has its awe-inspiring moments but alas, they are few and far between.

Summary: “Underwhelming epic” sounds like an oxymoron, but that is the best way to describe Exodus: Gods and Kings.  

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

The Counsellor

For F*** Magazine

THE COUNSELLOR

Director: Ridley Scott
Cast:    Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Dean Norris, John Leguizamo, Natalie Dormer, Rosie Perez, Richard Cabral, Sam Spruell
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Run Time: 118 mins
Opens: 28 November 2013
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scene, Violence and Coarse Language)

Why do people swim with sharks? After all, sharks have a long-standing reputation as fearsome creatures, nature’s perfect predator, and the self-preservation instinct in all of us dictates that we stay as far away from them as possible. Perhaps some have nerves of steel, others wish to face their fears; some are drawn to the allure of living on the edge, others convinced that the circumstances are controlled and safe and that sharks are largely misunderstood.



Here, our “swimmer” is the Counsellor of the title (Fassbender), otherwise unnamed. He seems to have everything: he’s handsome, wears lots of Armani and is very much in love with his girlfriend Laura (Cruz). He has, however, run into money troubles and decides to enter into an illicit drug deal with eccentric kingpin Reiner (Bardem). Within Reiner’s circle are his vampy love Malkina (Diaz) and middleman Westray (Pitt). The Counsellor is also the court-appointed lawyer to convict Ruth (Perez), mother of a high-ranking cartel figure (Cabral). Of course, things go awry, as things must, the Counsellor’s existence crumbling apart as the days go by, all he holds dear at stake.



The Counsellor is directed by Ridley Scott, from a script by nigh-legendary novelist Cormac McCarthy, author of No Country for Old Men, The Road, All the Pretty Horses and Blood Meridian. The Counsellor is the veteran writer’s first screenplay, and what an unfortunate clunker this is. The dialogue consists almost exclusively of endless strings of platitudes, opaque threats and nauseating anecdotes of violence and sex. Cringe-worthy, faux-portentous lines like “I think the truth has no temperature” crop up repeatedly. The shootouts and a car chase seem like very perfunctory insertions, as if they’re there only to fulfil some unwritten requirement about a thriller film involving the drug trade.



Yes, Ridley Scott has earned his reputation as a well-regarded director and does stage some shocking moments of graphic violence fairly effectively. There’s a bit with a motorcycle and a trip wire, and a scene involving the deployment of a “bolito”, a nasty motorised garrotte. The problem is, the material isn’t very cinematic and it seems even he finds it hard to make two people talking to each other look interesting or dynamic.



In addition to the pedigree behind the camera, the film’s mostly solid cast also contributes to how ultimately disappointing it is. Seeing all those names on the poster should whet the appetite and admittedly, these actors aren’t bad. Michael Fassbender’s Counsellor seems to be caught in a moral dilemma and he does have some moments of gut-wrenching emotion – but we barely get to know the character at all and he’s a somewhat smug guy whose troubles are of his own making, making it difficult to sympathise with him in spite of Fassbender’s best efforts. He was a lot more interesting as the android David in Scott’s previous film Prometheus.



Real-life husband and wife Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz are in this, though they do not share the screen together. Both are alumni of Cormac McCarthy film adaptations; Bardem having starred in No Country For Old Men and Cruz in All the Pretty Horses. Bardem appears to be having fun with the role, flamboyant and equal parts affable and shady and carrying hints of his Bond villain Silva from last year’s Skyfall. Cruz’s Laura is very much “the girlfriend”, doing nothing actually of note through the whole film beyond a roll in the hay with the Counsellor and some poolside flirting with Malkina. Brad Pitt in his supporting role will make moviegoers go “oh hey, it’s Brad Pitt in a supporting role” and that’s about it.



Of course, there’s one performer who absolutely pulls the whole thing down with her every time she’s on screen: Cameron Diaz. The name conjures up images of ditzy blonde characters clapping their hands and squealing in delight. She is far from the first person who comes to mind when one thinks “femme fatale”, and she amply demonstrates how inept she is with stilted line delivery and laughable posturing. In fact, she attempted to affect a Barbadian accent, but test audiences found it so distracting that she was forced to re-dub all her dialogue in post-production. Angelina Jolie was attached to the role for a time and there’s no question that she would have been a better fit. Looking at Malkina’s character poster, it seems the poster designer’s brief was “make Cameron Diaz look as much like Angelina Jolie as possible.” We can tell the difference, we really can. Even looking past Diaz’s performance, the character is written as a man-eating, wicked wildcat, followed everywhere by two pet cheetahs and sporting a cheetah tattoo. It’s a caricature that beggars belief.



The Counsellor comes off as one of those films that imagines itself to be far cleverer than it actually is, appearing daring and edgy but ultimately hollow, unpalatable and unsatisfying. Its top-tier cast are given pages of drivel to spout; a pity since Cormac McCarthy’s first screenplay was an eagerly-anticipated work. More alienating and off-putting than thrilling and absorbing, The Counsellor flounders even under Scott’s direction and will leave audiences drowning in a miasma of highfalutin excess.

SUMMARY: The Counsellor lays down the law, crushing its illustrious cast, prolific writer and celebrated director flat.

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Prometheus: "Not a Mindless Blockbuster"

A letter that I wrote to the Straits Times Life! Mailbag as a response to an article about Ridley Scott's blockbuster film was published today, on my brother's birthday. Happy birthday Tedd!

 Thanks to the mail editors for attaching a flattering picture of Michael Fassbender to the letter.

Prometheus

For F*** Magazine Singapore

 Movie Review                                                                                              5/6/12    

                      

PROMETHEUS

2012

Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Logan Marshall-Green,

Directed by: Ridley Scott

             WeeeehhhhRRRRrrrrrrrr! WeeeehhhhRRRRrrrrrrrr! WeeeehhhhRRRRrrrrrrrr! The haunting mechanical whine that played in the background of the trailer for Prometheus and before that the trailer for 1979’s Alien was the sound science-fiction fans were overjoyed and excited to hear again after so long. It was the sound that heralded director Ridley Scott’s return to the world he helped create with Alien, and marked his first science-fiction film since 1982’s Blade Runner, in its own right a landmark sci-fi film. The film world has been bristling with anticipation and now, Prometheus has landed.

            The story tells of an expedition into outer space in search of the origins of life on earth. In 2089, archaeologist Dr Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace) and her colleague/love interest Charlie Holloway (Marshall-Green) discover a cave painting on the Scottish Isle of Skye that corresponds to others discovered at sites across the world and spanning millennia. The painting depicts a star map, and funded by the aging multibillionaire CEO Peter Weyland (Pearce), Shaw, Holloway and their crew travel across the cosmos to a distant moon. Weyland Corp employee Meredith Vickers (Theron) oversees the expedition with a watchful eye, assisted by the advanced android David (Fassbender). The crew makes one groundbreaking discovery after the other, coming to the conclusion that humanoid beings called the Engineers was the genesis of life on earth, but encounters more than they bargained for as the mission unspools and they find they should be more concerned about survival than existential head-scratchers.

           The film is best-described as an indirect prequel to Alien – it’s a different beast, but clearly of the same ancestry. This reviewer watched Alien with Ridley Scott’s audio commentary before watching Prometheus, and Scott muses about the mysterious “Space Jockey”, what his purpose in the story was, who or what he might have been and the nature of his cargo of alien eggs. Scott has said that he wondered why the directors who took on the Alien sequels never addressed this, and has his chance to remedy this big-time in Prometheus. That strange skeletal figure is central to the story, and where Alien was a locked-house thriller confined to the dank spaceship Nostromo, Prometheus is far more ambitious in scope and practically announces its intention to be an epic film. It even pulls off making the oft-ridiculed “ancient aliens” theory seem somewhat plausible.

            Prometheus tangles with omnipresent philosophical themes and attempts to tackle the issue of science vs. religion, mixed in with a “curiosity killed the cat” cautionary tale, all on a grand and involving scale. It’s a movie that aims very high, and results in an absorbing and challenging viewer experience. There aren’t just plot twists; there are plot twists on steroids. At times, the intensity is at a fever pitch and may leave audiences desperately gasping for air and reeling in shock. It’s a film that requires the audience to do some thinking – however, this is not necessarily a completely good thing. Towards the end of the film, multiple plot points and bits and pieces are tossed at the audience, and it’s near impossible to connect the dots as the story unfolds before your eyes. Several connections to the original film feel a tad forced and superfluous. As much as one wants to get swept up in the breathtaking moment, one also struggles to sort out all this sensory input. This niggling bit is ultimately difficult to reconcile, and the film occasionally buckles under the weight of the philosophical overtones.

One thing that’s for sure is that the picture is lavishly produced and has a really rich atmosphere. While the Nostromo was a creaky, lived-in commercial freighter, the Prometheus is slick, state-of-the-art and ultra high-tech (it’s interesting in the same way the Star Wars prequels look far more refined than the original trilogy). The barren moon of LV-223 doesn’t look terribly interesting, but inside the cave complex the atmosphere is chilling and menacing and ties neatly into the Space Jockey’s ship. Production designer Arthur Max’s impressive physical sets complement the impressive digital effects, and the lack of an over-reliance on the latter is welcome amongst blockbusters infested with overblown, plasticky CGI. The creature designs are generally excellent and carry over the aliens’ sometimes-obvious sexual imagery from the other films, and all of these beings look decidedly creepy.

An important component of any deep-space expedition movie is the crew. The cast is more than competent; however there are several characters that practically announce that they won’t make it too far, taking some of the fun out of guessing how each of them ends up. Noomi Rapace leads the charge as the typically strong but multi-dimensional woman found in many Ridley Scott films. Dr Elizabeth Shaw is put through the wringer and a whole host of horrible things happen to the character, Rapace pulling us in completely. Her performance during what is arguably the most intense, gory scene of the movie is harrowing and powerful. As her love interest, Logan Marshall-Green embodies a sort of naïve enthusiasm as a character who is as much an adrenaline junkie as he is a scientist. The two have a fairly interesting dynamic that isn’t given a whole lot of attention, but is fun to watch.

Michael Fassbender plain steals the show from everyone else. Playing an android realistically is a remarkable acting challenge few performers pull off seamlessly – Fassbender is certainly one of them, mastering the facial tics, vocal inflection and body language to teeter on the edge of the uncanny valley. He definitely invokes HAL 9000 from the sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey in the way the character begins as seemingly childlike but gradually acquires human characteristics; not all of them savoury ones. Machines are usually clear-cut and precise, but David’s moral ambiguity is intriguing in the extreme. Charlize Theron’s icy, no-nonsense, and businesslike Meredith Vickers has something lurking below the surface, and is a character that in the hands of a lesser actor could turn out laughably flat, but is played with care by Theron. Guy Pearce is caked in slightly less-than-convincing makeup as an old man but still makes something of an impact as someone who is powerful in spite of his frailty.

Those looking forward to a masterful science-fiction film packed with captivating visuals, impressive performances, the thrills and body-horror gore expected of the franchise will mostly not be disappointed. Viewers are advised not to expect a carbon copy of Alien, and the slightly muddy bits of plot are compensated for by an altogether-dazzling end product.

SUMMARY: Hop aboard the Prometheus: there may be a little turbulence, but you’re not going to regret taking the ride.

RATING: 4/5 STARS